How To Make Money in ART For Fun and Profit

Art is NOT about what is good or not. It IS about EMOTION and what people are TOLD is good. This is true 'follow the crowd' thinking. As Don Alm says, The Bigger Fool Theory - see if there is a bigger fool who will spend more on it than you.

Anyway. Here are two ways to make money from art...

Method One - Pricey Paper
[*]Never sell the original. Get prints made from a drum scanner and sell them - make sure you limit them to 1,500 copies and that a portion of each print goes to some kind of charity.
[*]Tell people they are limited edition investment pieces.
[*]Sell them on-consignment in art stores - just at the beginning.


Method Two - Kinda Agent
[*]Get artists and their works, on your books.
[*]Market to those most likely to buy high-priced originals. And tell them they most likely can't afford the work of this well-known artist.
[*]Sell the painting for 15% commission on top of what the artist wanted - OR - Sell it for thousands and thousands of dollars above what the artist wanted.


I've not done either - BUT - it was something I was SERIOUSLY considering doing a while back and these are the methods/models I was going to use.

I know people who have bought pieces of paper... achem... limited edition prints... and they've spent as much as $1,500 per print (unframed). The artist? Darcy Doyle. I don't know what they see in the works.

As for buying now to sell for a profit in the future... (see notes about Don's Bigger Fool Theory at the top) - I bet Allen Bond, the bankrupt and failed Aussie businessman, wishes he never spent $56 million for the painting he bought HA!

Whatever. Hope this helps.

Michael Ross.

Thanks Michael - excellent post!

This is an area of interest to me.... I haven't done anything with it yet, but I have an artist friend who would be happy for me to promote his prints on commission....

Here is another interesting story. Here in Australia, there is a well-known artist named Ken Done. Not only does he sell his original art and prints, but he also makes a lot of money selling his art on T-shirts, caps, mugs, etc. Every tourist shop in Australia seems to have a compulsory bunch of Ken Done T-shirts on sale for tourists....

So what is Ken Done's secret? Is it how he paints? Or maybe is it the subject of his art? Well, that may have something to do with it. But my artist friend thinks differently....

In a previous career, Ken Done was an extremely successful advertising man! I think there's his REAL secret!

- Dien Rice


Here's a brief biography of Ken Done....

The problem is that no one has really defined
art, except the objectivists...i.e. Ayn Rand.
Until people agree with WHAT art is, there is
no objective standard by which to judge what
GOOD art is....

I agree with Michael...otherwise I'd have to admit
that andy warhol was a great artist, which i
REFUSE to do...but he was commercially successful.

just my 5 bucks worth....

Hi Joe,

Interesting post! It happens that I just met up with my artist friend.... And we talked about this topic (among others).



I asked him if Salvador Dali was considered a "serious" artist by other artists.... and he said "yes". (He said Dali was considered "up there" with the greats like Van Gogh.) I also asked him the same question about Andy Warhol, and he said "yes", he was considered a "serious" artist too. "Even the painting with the Campbell Soup cans?" I asked. And he said "yes".

Essentially, he said, if they're doing "art" then they're considered "serious" artists....

My meagre understanding of "art" is that it is designed to evoke some kind of "emotional" response, though that's still quite a unspecific definition.... How did Ayn Rand define it?

The way I'm thinking of "art" is as possibly the "ultimate" info-product! (Maybe this is how Dean DuVall is thinking of it!) Just think - a piece of paper, essentially a poster (a print), can sell for a couple hundred bucks. That's a huge mark-up.... And that's not counting other possibilities. If you wanted to (and if it was appropriate), you could sell art on T-shirts, tea towels, cups, and so on, as well as selling prints and the originals....

Here's another story, to add to what I wrote about the Australian artist Ken Done earlier.... As I said before, now he's a financially successful artist, but in a previous career he was an advertising man.

Apparently, when Ken Done wanted to get started in his artistic career, he set up an exhibition of his art works. He found a unique way to get attention. He sent out invitations - printed on T-shirts! These were "artistic" invitations, sent to a variety of journalists. The T-shirt invitations got their attention, and they turned up to his exhibition and reviewed it (he got free publicity).

In addition to that, Ken Done was selling merchandise right from the beginning - T-shirts and other things with his art on them. Apparently, Ken Done made money from his art right from the start. (This was told to me by my artist friend.)

- Dien

> The problem is that no one has really
> defined
> art, except the objectivists...i.e. Ayn
> Rand.
> Until people agree with WHAT art is, there
> is
> no objective standard by which to judge what
> GOOD art is....

> I agree with Michael...otherwise I'd have to
> admit
> that andy warhol was a great artist, which i
> REFUSE to do...but he was commercially
> successful.

> just my 5 bucks worth....


Salvador Dali museum web site

(and I'm doing this from memory, so it may not
be exact!).

According to Ayn Rand, art is the SELECTIVE recreation of life.

Her theory was that what an artist chooses to put in the painting reveals their psycho-epistemology. That is, it reveals their values and how they view life, ie whether the universe is good or bad. One little example she gave always stayed with me. If you go to a party and see a very attractive woman in a beautiful evening gown who had a zit on her face, you would not ascribe any importance to it. Yet, if an artist painted that, you would, because the artist felt that it was important.

Now, when you see still life, the apples you see look like none you have seen. The artist is painting his concept of "appleness". He takes all the apples he has ever seen, extracts all the similarities and discards all the non-essentials and differances. But, in the example above, the
artist, by including the blemish (a non-essential) he is making a statement about life and the way he views people, etc. It is not that life imitates art, it is that art mirrors the artist's subconscious.

In case you're interested, my 2 favorite artists
are Vermeer and Sylvia Bokor. I have no connection with her other than a profound debt of gratitude for showing me that a reproduction of a cambells soup can or paint thrown against a wall are not art!


THIS is art...as it could, and should be!